Recently, a domestic network drama occupied a prominent position in the major media, and in just one week of broadcasting, it had more than 400 million views, and more than 20,000 people scored a high score of 8.2 on Douban. Such a phenomenon-level heat once reminded people of last year's hit web drama "The Hidden Corner", so what kind of drama is this "Beginning"?
What "The Beginning" says
As a web series with few episodes, the main plot line of "Beginning" is easy to explain: the bus taken by female college student Li Shiqing (Zhao Jinmai) and game architect Xiao Heyun (Bai Jingting) exploded, and they woke up after the explosion to find that the time was back to before the bus accident. They want to stop the accident, but no matter how hard the two try, they can't avoid the bus explosion - time goes back - the two people wake up on the bus again.
Experienced readers who watch the film will probably understand that this drama is a work with the core theme of the time loop. And such a theme, although it is not a new thing in foreign countries, but domestic film and television dramas are still less involved in this aspect because of some factors, and this attempt of "The Beginning" can also be regarded as a small opening up of the road.
Perhaps it is precisely because of the scarcity of similar themes in China, so "Beginning" has a basis for attracting audiences from the beginning.
But if you want to go further on the basis of the good, you need to fill the skeleton of the main line with just the right amount of flesh and blood, and at this point the best works of the same type give a good answer: the funny and absurd plot of "Groundhog Day", the exquisite design and interpretation of life in "Source Code", the thrilling atmosphere of "Horror Cruise" and the brain-burning film structure, and so on.
And "The Beginning" has its own answer:
Although most of the scenes in the play are only cramped scenes on a bus, and even some netizens joke that 'there is no need to change clothes after filming a whole drama', the creators of "Beginning" still try their best to make the people and things in this limited space interesting, thick, and collide - Li Shiqing and Xiao Heyun are in a cycle of slowly understanding the laughter and heartache behind the second teenager who raises cats, the anchor who shoots short videos, and the enthusiastic aunts; in the process of exploring the truth, The friction with the murderer and the police gradually escalates, so that the audience's tension is constantly raised; following the protagonist's perspective, the audience will continue to think, what can be done to save themselves and save the passengers and escape from this death cycle?
In fact, a work with the time loop as the core, no matter whether its expression is absurd or terrifying, as long as it can make the audience and the characters in the play participate in solving the time puzzle, it has been half successful.
Why it looks good
The meaning of good looks is also different for different audiences, as the old saying goes, 'A thousand viewers have a thousand Hamlets'. "The Beginning" was able to receive a lot of praise in just two weeks after it aired, and it is not only the advantage of the plot enrichment.
From the perspective of the entire series, the biggest difference between this web series and those long-form episodes with 70 or 80 episodes is that the pace of the plot of "Beginning" is very fast, which is especially evident in the first episode of the opening and the small climax of the plot in episodes 8, 9, and 10.
The story begins with a wide-angle lens revealing the background and location of the story, a modern city of 'Jialin', and giving two close-ups of the bridge; then the camera turns to a moving bus, a tanker truck, and a delivery man (all of which are part of the bombing), which is a vibrant city, but this calm picture is accompanied by an anxious police call: the voice of a girl named Li Shiqing tells the police that there is a bomb on the bus and it is about to explode.
In less than 1 minute, the audience can understand the core events of the story, and this kind of sound-painting confrontation can also bring the audience a sense of tension that is 'calm on the surface but turbulent inward'. Soon, the bus in the picture does explode, and while advancing the plot, it tells us another thing - it is useless to simply call the police. Time has come to this point and not even entered the first episode of the main film, but the smart audience has already obtained enough information.
Two groups of people in the same shot
In the tenth episode, Xiao Heyun and Li Shiqing were chased by the police to an old residential area, and at the same time, Officer Jiang investigated the identity of the bus passengers and happened to come to this place, but the two lines that were originally unrelated to each other were cleverly arranged together, and the role of advancing the plot of the two lines and mobilizing the audience's emotions was completed with only a few shots. (Can I say I stayed up late until two o'clock to see episode 10 for work?) ）
The two are separated by only a wall from the police (who sees this is not nervous)
In addition to this, the acting skills of the actors in the play are really amazing.
The pain, despair, and disbelief of Li Shiqing, played by Zhao Jinmai, when he was stabbed to death by the murderer with a knife in the eighth episode, and the disappointment, incomprehension, and anger of discovering that the driver's uncle he had always believed in the tenth episode was also the murderer, were all three points.
Bai Jingting is a good interpretation of the mental journey of an ordinary 25-year-old urban youth facing this kind of change. The interpretation when he first entered the loop was slightly green, but as the plot progressed, his acting skills also improved visible to the naked eye.
Liu Yijun, as an actor of the older generation with outstanding acting skills, plays a senior criminal policeman in the play, and his delicate acting skills are also a great highlight of the whole play.
I really haven't seen .jpg of this
And the most praiseworthy is the actor Liu Dan, who plays Tao Yinghong, who really interprets the cold-blooded and hysterical horror that the criminal will embark on the road of no return to the bone marrow.
Tao Yinghong's gaze .jpg
The plot, rhythm, and acting skills of the actors in the play "Beginning" are very good, and it is not surprising that it has exceeded 400 million plays in such a short period of time.
What this play says
Sun Molong, the director of "Beginning", actually has not many directing works, but the amount is small and more refined, such as "Mountains and Seas", "I Am Yu Huanshui" and so on. Director Sun's works are often depicted and thought about human nature, and this "Beginning" is also the same as before.
In the play, Xiao Heyun said when he got out of the car once: "Kindness is not a cheap virtue, it needs to be matched with ability." "We are not murderers, there is no need to feel guilty for the sake of this car of people!"
And Li Shiqing asked him: "If the cycle will always be advanced, I will definitely get on the train at the university city station, but what about you?" ”
Xiao Heyun had no way to answer.
In the quarrel, both people have their own positions, and neither can convince the other. But after the quarrel, the two people were able to think about the problem from each other's point of view again, Xiao Heyun saw Li Shiqing's sincerity, and Li Shiqing could also understand his hesitation. They saw officer Jiang Feng who died in the line of duty, saw the smiling face of the old uncle of the melon farmer, and felt the kindness of others before they had the strength to take action.
After that, the two solve the misunderstanding, and work together in the cycle to find out the real culprit of the explosion hidden in the bus passengers; at the same time, they re-understand the world and themselves in the stories of different passengers and the experience of the cycle again and again. The soul skeleton of "The Beginning" is the continuous growth of two young people. One is a college student in the ivory tower, the other is a newcomer to the workplace who is obsessed with his ideals, how will he choose in the face of difficulties? A secondary two teenager with asthma, an anchor who always smiles in front of everyone, an old uncle who delivers watermelons to his son after labor reform, or an uncle who is forced to move out of the garage and lend sanitary napkins to the heroine... These people who have no intersection are twisted together under the action of the gears of fate, and different people and colorful lives give the two young people different thoughts.
Xiao Heyun thought thoughtfully
Write at the end
The overall plot of the first 10 episodes of "Beginning" is reasonable and compact, and in general, it is a very good domestic web drama. The slightly deficient place is that the performance of the supporting characters in some scenes is slightly exaggerated; and some netizens comment that 'because it is a web drama, the picture does not have a good texture', but these aspects do not affect the viewing experience very much, in the end whether it can maintain such a good reputation, it depends on how the plot of the remaining episodes develops.
Finally, a little Easter egg, the mobile phone ringtone that rings every explosion in the play is the standard cannon song, and the meaning of cannon is 'regular' and 'chakra', when playing the cannon song, the voice part will repeat it again and again, just like the time loop in the play. I hope that the two young people in the play can be like a final cannon, treat the world with warmth, and can also accept the warmth of the world, until the last summary, the last chord can end this wonderful music.